Among the numerous collections of short tales by Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693; Figure 1), one of the most distinguished  novelists in seventeenth-century Japan, his magnum opus is no doubt Nihon  Eitaigura (1688; Figure 2). Of  late this work has been noted, not only from the national but also international  viewpoint, as one of the most interesting and illuminating historical writings  regarding their contemporary economic phenomena and ideas. From its subtitle,  Daifuku Shin Choza Kyo, this collection might at first sight  seem to be a moral book (‘kyo’) on how to have success in life  (‘choza’) in the current thriving society (‘daifuku’,  ‘shin’). Only two thirds or so of the 30 tales in it, in fact, were  moral fables about those piling up riches thanks to their ingenuity or dexterity or  ending in retributive poverty due to their conceit or wickedness. The rest of them  feature real successful entrepreneurs, by the alias or real name (e.g., Mitsui  Takatoshi, 1622-1694, the founder of Mitsukoshi), and describe vividly, if in  somewhat comedic veins, the way in which they struggled in the so-called cash  nexus.

The tale in number 4 of volume 2 of the collection, entitled ‘Tengu wa iena no  kazaguruma’, is a case in point. It unfolds as follows.

The fishery village of Taiji, Wakayama, has a master of harpooning, whose given name  is Gennai, family name Tengu, and house flag of a pinwheel  (‘kazaguruma’ in Japanese). He led the local whaling industry to  prosperity not only by taking by far more whales than anyone else but also by  ingeniously producing oil from disused whale bone fat. The prosperity accelerated as  he devised a collective way to whale using fishing nets and organised the fishery  profession beyond his native village. These also procured him not just enormous  wealth but also wide reverence.

Gennai was also devout, practicing his religion at Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine (a shrine  which is located at Nishinomiya, a pivotal place for transportation about 130km away  from his village in a straight line but in much more distance by sea). Such was his  faith that his annual pilgrimage to the shrine on the early morning of the tenth day  of the new year lasted for over two decades, the festive morning event in every year  which continues at the same shrine to date, known as ‘Toka-Ebisu’.

On the tenth day of a year, however, he woke up so late that he could by no means  arrive at the shrine in the morning. Too late though it was, he rushed in a  high-speed boat with twenty oars, but not until night fell did he come ashore at  Nishinomiya. He saw no visitors around the shrine any longer, nor was he received by  any shrinemen; he could not but turn back with his resentment finding no outlet.  While lying still in frustration aboard back, he dreamt a sleeping or waking dream,  in which Ebisu, the god enshrined at Nishinomiya, made his appearance to reveal an  oracle or divine instruction to him to the effect that Gennai could and should carry  his caught sea breams fresh to more distant consumers by pricking them with a  needle. Back in Taiji he followed the instruction to see his market more expanded  and, thereby, his wealth more accrued.

As many commentators have pointed it out, it is Taichi Kakuuemon (1623-1699) that is  the most possible real person that Saikaku might have borne in mind writing this  tale. Kakuuemon is noted to have revolutionised whaling from a simple way of  harpooning to a combining way of netting and harpooning (Figure 3, the supposedly oldest extant graphic representation  about whaling, reproduced from volume 2, number 4, of Nihon  Eitaigura). In Saikaku’s days, also, he may have been well known  and charismatic among the readership, considering his innovation is presumably dated  circa 1677. It may be remarked, nevertheless, that there is no documentary proof  hitherto available that Kakuuemon would have played a role in commercial  distribution of see breams.

First of all, this story may well draw our attention to the deity of Ebisu and its  relationship to the significance of the sea bream. Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine is today  called simply ‘Nishinomiya Shrine’, but its official name in the  seventeenth century was ‘Nishinomiya Ebisu Daimyo Shrine’, as the  record of building its main architecture in July 1663 shows. As Nihon  Eitaigura implies, moreover, the shrine was held in worship as the most  prestigious of all the places enshrining Ebisu in the country, especially, among the  merchant classes, by the time that Saikaku wrote it. The present article uses the  appellation ‘Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine’, to note the deity enshrined  therein (Figure 4).

Ebisu is featured in Kojiki, the oldest extant chronicle in Japan  (c.711), and Nihon Shoki, the second oldest (c.720). According to  them, Ebisu was born to Izanagi and Izanami, the god and goddess creating Japan, but  was shortly exposed to sea because of his innate disabledness, with the final result  that he was enshrined as god of the sea—for safe water navigation and good  fishery harvests— at Nishinomiya. The worship of Ebisu got soon disseminated  among sailors and fishermen to the point where many shrines with the same divine  name were erected everywhere they dropped in across the nation, providing meeting  places which in turn helped transmit the worship to local merchants. This explains  why Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine may well be regarded now as well as before as the  pivotal place for the faith underpinning thousands of Ebisu shrines.

The quintessential figure of Ebisu in graphic description features a lovely  combination of ample body and smiley face, with a fishing-rod on his right shoulder  and a sea bream under his left arm (Figure 5).  As a matter of fact, there are hardly any exceptions. Considered to be a symbolic  representation of the enjoyable gift of sea bream—the most popular,  supposedly luxurious and divine fish—, this demonstrates how common among  sailors and fishermen was the conception or even aspiration that the deity of Ebisu  should not be parsimonious or punitive but liberal and supportive. It is not too  digressive to remark here that this is the case with Inari, god of the land,  regarded in worship mainly by farmers and peasants across the nation, with Fushimi  Inari Shrine, Kyoto, enjoying the pivotal place comparable to that of Nishinomiya  Ebisu Shrine.

Simply put, Ebisu as well as Inari was a god for a good harvest. Since a good harvest  was obviously beneficial to all members of the community, Ebisu was worshiped as  coming up with a blessed visitation to the whole. The ascending dominance of the  cash nexus, however, led many to doubt the obvious; since the market economy made a  good harvest give profits to some but losses to others within the same community,  Ebisu was no longer for the communal happiness but rather a god to which to pray for  one’s personal gain. It was the Edo era that witnessed this change in  divinity of Ebisu.

Another pivotal role played by Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine was in diffusing Bunraku  (Figure 7). As mentioned above, Ebisu has a  fishing-rod on his right shoulder and a sea bream under his left arm, but, as is  often unattended, he uses a small shrimp as bait. That is a representation of a  bonanza, bearing in mind that whereas shrimps were commonplace, sea breams were  scarce. To stand for this bonanza, as is well known, the dance called ‘Dance  for Ebisu (Ebisu-Mai)’ (Figure 6) was  born and was later turned into a puppet theatre for larger audience. This puppet  theatre was toured across the nation by puppeteers, the profession which was  organised and controlled under Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine and allegedly instrumental  for intelligence activities in the Medieval era or the Warring States period. Either  way, the puppet theatre was combined with the popular version of music called  ‘Joruri-Bushi’ to gain huge popularity as ‘Ningyo  (puppetry)-Joruri’ in the Edo era, boasting Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725),  the most famous scriptwriter. This form of poppet theatre is still popular while  today known as Bunraku.

Before proceeding to the next section, let us account succinctly for how Gennai  treated his caught sea breams, as described in Nihon Eitaigura.  What Ebisu advised him to do was presumably not to leave them dying but to make them  braindead aboard. For one, this treatment enabled him to distribute his sea breams  fresh in such a distance that he gained success in fishery; for another, it is  generally used among the fishery in Japan, today known as ‘ikejime’.  (One can see the theoretically identical technique in the final episode of  Dae Jang Geum, a Korean TV drama series.) It is possible and  probable that Saikaku may have heard of an entrepreneur winning a bonanza using this  innovative technique in the emerging market society, whether or not he was Kakuuemon  from Wakayama, a region whose coastal waters boast good harvests of sea breams to  date.

Saikaku’s story about Gennai has another episode relevant to our purpose; his  failed early-morning pilgrimage to Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine by sea. One can watch TV  news shows on the 10th January every year that report that hardly does the shrine  open its gate in the early morning before many young men rush in for its central  building in competition with one another, and that the shrine awards the winner the  prize ‘The Lucky Boy of the Year’. But no one hears in detail of how  this avowedly old racing event developed over time. Interestingly enough, Saikaku in  his Nihon Eitaigura wrote about Gennai’s regular  attendance—and his careless nonattendance—at the early-morning  pilgrimage to the shrine on the 10th January by boat (for details see Morita 2011).  Although there is no definitive evidence for it, it is not too unreasonable to infer  from Gennai’s high-speed boat that the pilgrimage took one or another form of  boat racing in those days, and that it provided a prototype for today’s  racing for ‘The Lucky Boy of the Year’. Gennai’s sort of  high-speed boat was originally used for whaling, but is used for festive boat races  (Figure 9), for it is easy to change her  direction. Moreover, considering that usual use was made of a small boat with twelve  oars for an urgent purpose (Figure 8) and of a  large boat with forty for a less urgent and more caring or long-distance purpose, it  seems to have been reasonable enough that Gennai would have chosen a boat with  twenty oars on the morning that he woke up too early. Assuming that he would have  had forty sailors bend the oars by turns from embarkation to landing and that the  weather and tide would have had no effect on his navigation on the average,  Saikaku’s description of Gennai’s fourteen hours or so travel from  Taiji to Nishinomiya seems to be realistic enough or not too fictitious to be a  reliable material for social history (for detail see Morita 2011). It is not too  conjectural to infer from this that the coastal waters before Nishinomiya Ebisu  Shrine were covered with innumerable high-speed boats coming across the nation on  the day of early morning pilgrimage.

That the annual boat race at Nishinomiya, on the 10th of January, attracted many  fearless sailors seeking the crown, is implied in an early-modern tale that dates  from 330 years ago, and it is very likely. All novels and tales are not too  unreliable for historiography.

Henrich Schliemann (1822-1890), a German archaeologist, discovered the ancient  remains of Troy along with the Mycenaean sites, led by his belief that that  Homer’s Iliad reflects historical events, a pioneering work  on Aegean civilisation. This way of discovery may not be confined to the archaeology  or historiography of the West. We conclude the present paper by suggesting that the  classic literature all over the world may provide us numerous hints to unknown  marine ethnographies.